202 ' [May, 



as well as in some others. The plant which produces the Siamese gamboge, for 

 instance, is confessedly unknown. In the southern parts of these Provinces, near 

 the Siamese boundary, there is a tree which produces a species of gamboge that 

 cannot be distinguished from the gamboge that is brought from Siam; and in an ar- 

 ticle which was read before the Asiatic Society of Bengal, three or four years ago, I 

 showe^l that that tree was Garcinia eUlplca, a species named and described as a 

 species imperfectly known by Dr. Wight ; who was not at all aware that it pro- 

 duced gamboge. There can, I think, be little doubt, but that this is the tree which 

 produces the Siamese gamboge. This was so clear to the members of the Asiatic 

 Society, that the Secretary wrote me, ' Our best botanists here, consider that 

 you have hit on the true tree at last.' Again, gum-kino was exported several 

 years ago in considerable quantities from Maulmain, brought overland from the 

 Shan States, and is produced so far as I can ascertain, (vom Sierocarptis Wallichii; 

 yet this tree has no place in our Medical Floras. 



I suspect that a large part of the crude camphor exported from China, and which 

 is always referred to Caviplwra officinanim, is the product of one of the common- 

 est weeds in Eastern India and China. In the early years of my residence at 

 Yavoy, the Burmese pointed out to me a weed with leaves like mullen, which 

 when bruised emits a strong odour of camphor. From it they told me they had 

 been in the habit of distilling, from time immemorial, as good camphor, except 

 that it was not so pure, as that which they saw in my medicine chest. Some of 

 the Chinese settlers also say that the same plant abounds in China, and that cam- 

 phor is made from it there. Mr. O'Riley, a suL'ar manufacturer at Amerst, made 

 more than a hundred pounds of camphor from this weed, a few years ago, and 

 sent a part of it to Calcutta for examination ; and the official authorities reported 

 on his specimens. 'In its refined form, it is identical in all its properties, with 

 Chinese camphor.' Mr. O'Riley sent flowering specimens of the plant to Cal- 

 cutta, and they were forwarded from thence to Dr. Voigt of Serampore, and the 

 report added: ' Dr. Voigt 'states that it belongs to De Candolle's genus Blumea, 

 and is, so far as he can see, a new species.' Not having books to enable me to 

 determine the question of its being a new species or not, I left it in abeyance 

 until I procured De Candolle's Prodromus, three or four years ago, and I was 

 soon satisfied then, that it is the same plant as that which appeared in Wallich's 

 catalogue, as Comjza gvandis, and which De Candolle has described as Blumea 

 grai/dis. Wallich's specimens were from Yavoy, without flowers, and De Can- 

 dolle describes the leaf* as nine inches long with the petiole, by three 

 wide, serrated, and bearing on the petiole five or six remote linear acute lobes ; 

 which corresponds precisely to some specimens of our camphor plant; but it does 

 not correspond to any other species of Blumea in the Provinces. This plant 

 probably covers more of the surface of the Tenasserim Provinces than any other 

 weed. Wherever the trees are cut down to clear the land, it springs up so thick 

 that scarcely any thing else can live with it; so that an old clearing looks in the 

 distance like a field under cultivation." 



A letter was read from the Royal Society of London, dated Feb. 



"Cum petiolo 9 poll, longa, 3 poll, lata serratis, petiolo lobulos, 5 6 dis- 

 tantes lineares acutos gerentibus." 



